


The Past and the Pending

by PandoraCulpa



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, First War with Voldemort, Gen, Non-Linear Narrative, Selkies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-19
Updated: 2012-08-19
Packaged: 2017-11-12 11:35:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/490449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PandoraCulpa/pseuds/PandoraCulpa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Too late, too little. Too much to tolerate. That was Alastor Moody to perfection.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Past and the Pending

**Author's Note:**

> Written in 2007 for the NANASF Challenge. The inspiration for the piece is "The Past and the Pending" by the Shins. 
> 
> This doesn't really jive with much of the HP fic you see out there. It falls before the second war with Voldemort- likely close to the end of the first, though I'm not positive of the timing myself. I've delved back into my own little HP-verse, specifically into the background and extended friendships of one of my favorite canon characters. I should probably warn that several of the characters in this are entirely of my own invention, and therefore most likely won't be familiar. But I do hope you'll enjoy them all the same.
> 
> Also, I know nothing about sailing. Any mistakes (and I'm sure there are loads) are entirely my fault, and due to the fact that rather than spend time crossreferencing and seeking personal accounts, I decided to sleep instead.

He could've Apparated. It would have made more sense, but some perverse impulse in him sent him stumping awkwardly up the rocky path despite the difficulty. He'd only recently received his newest prosthesis, and found that adjusting to the stiff, wooden peg was a great deal more arduous than expected. Part of him relished the frustration and the new pain of the amputation, fairly wallowing in the feeling of hopelessness that leeched in with every misplaced step. It was the same part of his psyche that sent him scrambling up a scree-covered slope on another kind of fool's mission, his head swimming from anguish and exertion.  
  
His destination wasn't much farther. Pausing to rest, he wiped his forehead with a stained handkerchief and squinted up the steep hillside to the point where the trail gave up any pretense of being a real, passable road, and abandoned itself to rockslides and vegetation. There was a small clearing just beyond there, empty and unremarkable, and he stared at it intently for nearly a minute before something seemed to shimmer in the air. Grunting softly, he lowered his head and plodded on.  
  


~*~*~

"Nae, for the last time! Ye'll nae have her, and that's final!" Red faced and red haired, the enormous man slammed a fist the size of a ham against the table, rattling plates and silverware and upsetting a small vase of violets. Water spilled out, soaking into the linen tablecloth, but the giant's eyes never left his. "Ye're daft, asking me such a thing."

Silence filled the small kitchen, broken only by the rhythmic ticking of the grandfather clock in the next room. The two men stared at one another, mute, furious, and each utterly determined to have his way.

The clock counted off twenty minutes imperturbably, chiming the hour and then passing on to the next. A soft scuffling broke the tableau; a tiny woman, brown as a nut, stepped through the doorway of the kitchen, pausing to take in their standoff. She frowned, setting down a steaming teapot on the table between them and wiping up the spilled water still standing on the table. Without a word she left them, but the giant stirred as though he'd been awakened from slumber.

Pulling a flask from his pocket, he poured a bit of the liquor into a teacup before reluctantly handing it across the table to his companion. "What's sent ye about on this nonsense anyway?" he groused, topping off his cup with hot tea. "Coming at me with yer demands…"

He didn't reply. Instead he reached into his breast pocket, and pulled out a small lilac-colored envelope, tossing it to the table in answer. It was still unopened, but he didn't need to crack the white wax seal to know what it contained. He'd heard every word many times before.

~*~*~

_Straight out of St. Mungo's, freshly stitched together, and the first place he goes is to the Ministry. Not home. Home doesn't hold comrades in arms, who've dealt with losing pieces of their bodies, or their souls. Nor does it have the network of information he craves at this time, nor will there be lists of who's injured, who's dead, and who has simply disappeared. The lists are forever growing longer, and he's eager to cross off his own name. It's in the back of his mind that he should want to return to his flat, but he doesn't pause to examine his motivations. Not when there's so much else happening so fast._

_The tiled floors of the old building aren't kind to his new leg. It skitters and slides on the slick floor, forcing him to hop along after it like he's chasing his own limb. But he grits his teeth and perseveres, and soon is back in the Auror's offices, his home away from home. It's much as he left it- chaotic, a flurry of frantic activity- except for one thing. One small, innocuous rectangle of lilac paper that's tucked beneath the corner of the blotter on his desk; a pending disaster, the axe that's been poised to fall for so long already._

_He hadn't wept, or truly felt remorse when the Healers had told him his leg was dead, and would have to be removed. Life was difficult, and the fact that he still retained his was reason enough to have no regret for losing a mere few pieces. But the sign that was the envelope, and the letter still unseen, reminded him that all losses are not equal, and with the realization came a ravening sense of emptiness and despair._

~*~*~

Horatio had been kind as he was able, after. "Tis better this way," he'd said encouragingly, although the result had been rather the opposite. "An' going away ne'er solved a man's woes. Better to turn around, head fer home and get back to work. Get it off yer mind; there's bad enough things to worry on."

He took the platitudes with remarkable equanimity, when all he wanted was to curse his old companion six ways from Sunday and fly out, out, out, over the sea and into the sun and never, ever come back. But he held his temper, nodding amiably and making every attempt to leave as quickly and courteously as possible. No doubt it would be his last visit.

He'd shed the big man, explaining that he wasn't ready for an audience as he fought down the rocky trail with his new wooden leg, and Horatio had acceded. The giant understood pride, although he doubtless would never suspect that Moody didn't care at all if the entire Ministry watched him tumble arse over teakettle down the slope. It was a good excuse for solitude, and the lie troubled him not one whit. 

He'd only gone a few paces from the door however, when he heard his name called softly. He turned awkwardly on his peg leg, cursing his clumsiness under his breath, and was surprised to see a dark oval face framed in a gray shawl peeking out from around the corner of the cottage. Limpid brown eyes that bored into his soul studied him mutely, and he stared back at Horatio's wife, his desire for flight and isolation contesting with curiosity.

The times he'd spoken with Nereise were few, though he'd known her husband since they were Auror-Trainees. She was marked in his mind for her watchful silences, and the rare times when she did speak were always well worth attending. He'd no idea how she'd come to wed the blustering Scottish giant.

"He won't help you," she said. It was an acknowledgment rather than a question, and he nodded.

"No doubt he has his reasons, and he's entitled to them," he replied testily, wondering why she would bother with such an inane statement. "Excuse me, but I was going."

"I have a boat you can use."

The simple statement stalled him in his tracks, and he turned to face her once again.

"What did you say?" he asked slowly.

She cocked her head toward the rear of the building, at a small but well-tended pathway winding down the tor. "Down there," she told him. "She's not large, but she's nimble, and she'll easily carry you where you need to go. But you'll need to mind the waves- the sea is restless today."

He took an uncoordinated step toward her, the peg slipping in the scree, but her words had arrested his mind. "Why?" he asked sharply- more sharply than he'd intended. "Don't you worry that your husband was right about me?"

The wind lifted the fringe of her shawl, and pushed a thin cloud in front of the sun. There was something distant in her face, as though she had retreated far from the highlands where they stood, when she finally answered him. "I understand needing the solitude of the sea," she told him with quiet dignity.

~*~*~

_It was hardly a surprise. After all, they'd nearly gone this route months before, back before she'd finally broken down and screamed at him out the window in frustrated desperation. He thought he'd got it then- Merlin knows he'd tried. He'd tried harder to please her than damn near anything he'd done his entire life._

_He crouches on the pub stool, a pint of ale at his elbow. It will sit there untouched, but it's enough to ward off the bartender for most of the night. The envelope is jammed into his pocket, pressed uncomfortably against his ribs, but he pays it as little mind as his throbbing stump. The site of the amputation is still tender and raw, but he grinds it against the wooden cradle and grins at the pain shooting through his thigh._

_It is easier for the moment to sit and not think, just pretend that everything is as it has been for the past year. It can't last- he's no fool- but for tonight it's better this way. He concentrates on nothing more than deciding where he will sleep tonight, what new wards and hexes to begin studying, what shoes he will wear on the morrow. Empty, useless decisions, keeping his attention from what he has no control over._

_Earlier there had been no desire to return home; now it is an impossibility. She's not there; he wouldn't expect her there anyway. But he'd dreamt her there so often that it is saturated with her ghost, and he cannot face even that shade right now._

_Too late, too little. Too much to tolerate. That was Alastor Moody to perfection._

_So he starts to think, stops, starts again, doesn't drink, and wishes he could find a place where heartache doesn't exist, and if it did, it wouldn't matter anyway._

~*~*~

He had a bit of trouble with the ropes at first, but he'd sailed a little with Horatio in better days, and found that the lessons quickly returned. Nereise's boat was indeed nimble, tacking back and forth amid the tall swells with the happy exuberance of an otter, and he was easily able to manage it on his own. Soon he was sailing at a good clip, leaving a foaming trail in his wake as the land behind dropped away at his back. Navigation was an art he hadn't bothered learning, but even a novice could take a boat out into open water. It was returning that would be the tricky part, if he bothered. Still, his thoughts were focused upon the moment, moored as they were in the past, and although his future lay tantalizingly close, he bent his head to the task before him; a firm hand on the rudder and his eye on the horizon.

The sun had all but retreated behind sleek gray clouds, allowing only the occasional beam to pierce the shroud down to the heaving sea. The coast was merely a distant line, indeterminate in color, and distant as a memory, but still he sent the tiny craft surging gallantly up and down the waves that dipped and rose like the Highlands he'd so recently departed. Only when even that small reference sunk beneath the watery landscape did he pause, reef the sails, and allow the boat to ride aimlessly across the surface of the ocean. 

The world was empty; except for the slap of water against the hull and occasional creak from the rigging, no reference from his life remained. There was no loneliness or relief in the blankness of the open ocean. But there was stillness, despite the movement of the waves, and room enough for him to release his thoughts at last. Out there, pinned lightly between the endless sea and the sky, his insignificance was finally complete. 

~*~*~

_They sit together in silent contemplation, the clock still counting off the march of time nearby, but they are frozen in the moment. A still life; the huge man forever painted with an expression of bewilderment, the other blank and remote, but the only real thing in the room sits between them on the table, wrapped in lilac paper._

_"So it's done then," the giant rumbles, and heaves a sigh like a gale. "Och, but I ne'er thought I'd see the day… Seemed perfect fer ye both."_

_"Perfect disaster," he replies dryly. "We both know I'm incapable."_

_Horatio grumbles, waves a hand the size of a frying pan. "Enough o' yer glaikit clishmaclaiver. Ye weren't the only one t'blame. T'was two o' ye in that bed…" The rest catches in his throat as he casts a quick glance across the table. Contrition hangs about his ruddy face. "Och, lad, I didnae mean…"_

_He waves a hand dismissively, although the careless words still prick at the raw wound not couched in wood and cotton. "Let it go," he murmurs. "It's not important."_

_"Nae important? Moody, auld friend, that be the root o' yer problem…"_

_His hand descends with a bang on the tabletop. "I said, let it go," he says with deceptive mildness, though Horatio surely hears the steel buried there. "It's finished."_

_His friend glowers at him, "Givin' up, are ye?"_

_He refuses to let the ember of anger burn, twisting in his seat to look away, out the window at the end of the room and down to the slatey water pounding the sand. "I tried, Horatio," he growls. "But I've a job, and responsibilities, and criminals don't ask your bloody itinerary before they hex some poor sod! She knew that- I made damn sure she did. Twasn't I that changed."_

_"Sometimes that's what hurts 'em most," rumbles the giant._

~*~*~

From his sprawl on the deck he stared up at the bellies of clouds billowing above, peg and remaining foot both pointed toward the sinking sun as the waves rocked him more gently than they had during his voyage out. The deck boards were cool against his back, although his face felt chafed and raw from the sun and salty wind. But the most remarkable peace had settled over him as he lay prone beneath the sky, a mere speck in an infinite, sparkling universe. He was blank, empty, a vessel waiting to be filled, and without thought his hand traveled across his chest to his breast pocket. Fingers closed over the stiff paper, crunching it in his grip, the inevitable words inside crackling like static in the stillness of his mind.

One thumb slid across the seal slowly, tracing the familiar ridges and whorls in the milky wax. It felt like something he couldn't quite place, something that was slipping away from him even as he reached for it, like the wind that rippled and snapped the canvas sails overhead. It was reassuring, and terrifying, and as he broke the seal all the thoughts and emotions he'd been holding down slipped free into the briny air.

~*~*~

_The wind is fierce as the tiny woman leads him onto the pier, where a small sailboat is moored amid choppy waves being licked into white foam. Her instructions are terse and simple, but he listens to them closely and promises to remember. There's something akin to pity, but also to envy in her eyes as she watches him prepare to sail._

_"I'm sorry," she tells him abruptly. "Horatio is too, no doubt, though he seldom thinks to say so."_

_He pauses, rises from coiling one of the mooring ropes into a pile on the deck. The quiet comment has struck him an unexpected blow, one that he takes without flinching, but his mind shouts at the indignity of her empathy._

_"I don't want sympathy," he snaps at her gruffly. "I know what we both did, she and I, and it all comes up even. It's fair enough."_

_"I doubt it. Life seldom is." She turns, looking toward the west, over the wide, heaving ocean. A quiet sigh escapes her lips. "What you want most flees from you, just as what I most desire visits me morning and evening. And neither of us may have it."_

_He sees the sadness that hangs over her, a cloak of wistful longing, and something stirs in the back of his mind. A shred of a memory; a long night drinking, a hellish morning after, and an old friend's drunken confession. It's none of his affair, but he still can't help murmuring, "Has he never given back your skin?"_

_She smiles faintly, and the sheen of sorrow lifts from her just as the dew disappears before the morning's first rays. Her eyes meet his, their cool depths leviathan and mysterious. "No," she says quietly. "And I'll never ask for it. If he gave it to me, no matter how much I love him, I'd take it, and never return. Such is my nature, and he knows it. He'll never give it back, and though sometimes I grieve for the sea, it's better this way."_

_He doesn't know what to say, and so he busies himself with readying the boat once more, surprised to find himself remorseful of his curiosity. Soon the boat is prepared, and he's standing beside the tiller, while she stands on the pier poised to bid him farewell. For an instant they stare at one another, and then an impulse spurs him to blurt out, "I knew about… the other." He's never been able to bring himself to say the name. "I knew all along. Never held it against her, though." He swallows against the sudden pain that wells within him. "Always loved her as best I could."_

_There might have been a sheen of tears across her misty eyes. "I know," she tells him. "Dear Alastor."_

_Then the wind lifts, and the sails fill, and the ship trembles beneath his feet, eager for the tide. In moments it has slid from its dock, and is moving hesitantly toward open water. For a few minutes his attention is caught in the mechanics of sailing, and when he looks back toward the beach, only the shorebirds are witness to his departure._

~*~*~

The words seem unimportant, but he reads them again and again, parsing out meanings in the twisted prose. There's a stray hair that has fallen into the envelope, ash blonde and fine as a wire, and he carefully tucks the flap over to keep it safe inside. The anguish that was so raw with the first reading has subsided, and the ache that remains is not unlike that of the painful stump below his thigh. Anger, too, has dissipated into the limitless sky, blown apart by the wind and buried in the sea. 

It's neither forgiveness nor acceptance, this odd feeling that remains, but it's akin to both. It stretches like a thin red scar, sore and ready to bleed if prodded, but for the moment it holds all the new grief inside. It will return, to seep beneath the bandage on his soul another time, but now it has healed enough for him to go home. And maybe that's enough for this moment.

The boat yaws to port, and he snaps from his reverie to take hold of the rudder, guiding it back on course. Lights are beginning to glow in the distance, as night begins folding the coast in its arms; soon he will be back in harbor, and preparing to face the storms once again. Alone, a man crippled and bereft, but he thinks that with time perhaps he will be whole yet.


End file.
